The Seeds of Modern Threats
Michael Renner
On September 21, 2014, an estimated 400,000 people marched in New York City to demand that government leaders assembling in that city for a “climate summit” finally move from rhetoric to action. It was the largest of more than 2,600 protest events worldwide. The marches were the culmination of decades of growing climate activism that got its start soon after Dr. James Hansen put climate change on the political map. On a fittingly sweltering day in June 1988, Hansen—then the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies—testified before the U.S. Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee that global warming was not a natural phenomenon, but rather was caused by human activities that triggered a buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.1
Hansen was far from the first scientist to theorize about human-induced climate change. Such studies go back as far as the late nineteenth century, but by the 1960s and 1970s, scientists started to view the warming potential of gases like carbon dioxide as increasingly convincing. In February 1979, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) concluded in its “Declaration of the World Climate Conference” that “it appears plausible that an increased amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can contribute to a gradual warming of the lower atmosphere. . . . It is possible that some effects on a regional and global scale may be detectable before the end of this century and become significant before the middle of the next century.” By the 1980s, the pace of climate studies quickened, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was set up in 1988 by the WMO and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).2
It was Hansen, however, who conveyed an unmistakable sense of urgency, telling the assembled senators in 1988: “It’s time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here.” Yet his testimony marked merely the beginning of a protracted struggle to get governments, corporations, and society at large to understand that humanity’s own actions have brought about a challenge unlike any other—and then to act on that understanding.3
Michael Renner is a senior researcher at the Worldwatch Institute and codirector of State of the World 2015.
NASA
James Hansen testifying in 1988.
Ben Powless
Hansen getting arrested at a civic protest in 2011.
During the past quarter century, much has indeed changed. From Hansen’s early findings, climate modeling became ever more sophisticated, observational work multiplied, and scientific consensus solidified. The world’s governments came together in 1992 and set up the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the starting shot for a process of annual “conferences of the parties” (COPs) charged with negotiating a global climate treaty. Climate change, once the preserve of very few specialists, has become a household word. The number of studies and reports on climate impacts and possible solutions has mushroomed. By late 2013, the IPCC concluded that it “is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-twentieth century.”4
However, lofty rhetoric has far outpaced action. Climate negotiations have failed to deliver anything close to the breakthrough agreement that the world desperately needs. Hansen’s own sense of increasing urgency moved him from scientific inquiry toward activism in recent years. He was even arrested a few times at high-profile civic protests.
Strangely, we now find ourselves in an era of “sustainababble”—marked by wildly proliferating claims of sustainability. Even as adjectives like “low-carbon,” “climate-neutral,” “environmentally friendly,” and “green” abound, there is a remarkable absence of meaningful tests for whether particular governmental and corporate actions actually merit such descriptions.5
Meanwhile, powerful fossil fuel interests have mobilized with great effectiveness to thwart action amid all this hot air, sowing doubt and confusion about climate science, and opposing or delaying effective policy making. It brings to mind a quote from author Upton Sinclair, who once exclaimed that, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”6
Endless economic growth driven by unbridled consumption is so central to modern economies and is so ingrained in the thinking of corporate and political leaders that environmental action is still often seen as in conflict with the economy, and is relegated to inferior status. We have an economic system that is the equivalent of a great white shark: it needs to keep water moving through its gills to receive oxygen, and dies if it stops moving. The challenge, therefore, is broader than merely a set of technological changes. As activist Naomi Klein has argued, saving the climate requires revisiting the central mechanisms of the world’s pre-eminent economic system: capitalism.7
Shying away from such radical change, governments and international agencies are lining up behind “green growth”—a concept that reaffirms the centrality of economic growth and avoids any critique of the underlying dynamics that have brought human civilization to the edge of the abyss. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), “green growth means fostering economic growth and development while ensuring that natural assets continue to provide the resources and environmental services on which our well-being relies.”8
Humanity’s climate predicament is only the latest—if by far the most challenging—manifestation of its collision course with planetary limits. Ecological stress is evident in many ways, from species loss, air and water pollution, and deforestation to coral reef die-offs, fisheries depletion, and wetland losses. The planet’s capacity to absorb waste and pollutants is increasingly taxed.
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment found that even a decade ago, more than 60 percent of the world’s major ecosystem goods and services were degraded or used unsustainably. Some 52 percent of commercial fish stocks are now fully exploited, about 20 percent are overexploited, and 8 percent are depleted. The number of oxygen-depleted dead zones in the world’s oceans that cannot support marine life has doubled each decade since the 1960s; in 2008, there were more than 400 such zones, affecting an area equivalent in size to the United Kingdom. The decline of bees and other pollinators is jeopardizing agricultural crops and ecosystems. Urban air pollution causes millions of premature deaths each year. The World Health Organization recently revised its estimates of global deaths from air pollution to about 7 million people in 2012—more than double previous estimates and making air pollution the world’s single worst environmental health risk.9
A Double-edged Sword
How did we get to this moment in time? The onset of agriculture was the first major marker of humanity’s rising claim on the planet’s resources, followed by the Industrial Revolution starting in the late eighteenth century. According to environmental historian J. R. McNeill, shifting agriculture improved caloric intake and thus increased energy availability perhaps 10-fold over what was available to hunter-gatherer societies. Settled agriculture provided another 10-fold increase, and domesticated animals (oxen, horses, etc.) offered concentrated muscle power for transport and plowing of fields. These were the beginnings of an—albeit still modest—energy surplus.10
It was the Industrial Revolution that increased that surplus beyond anything seen before, and that allowed humans to dominate Earth’s biophysical systems. The invention of the steam engine permitted industrializing societies to tap coal as the primary energy source, replacing and augmenting the muscle power of humans and their domesticated animals. By 1900, steam engines had become 30 times as powerful as the first machines of around 1800. Then, by the late nineteenth century, internal combustion engines made their appearance, more efficient and powerful than steam engines, allowing for the generation of electricity and offering a means of mass transport.11
The period since the advent of the Industrial Revolution has seen astonishing scientific and technical advances. Whereas just 10 scientific journals were published in the mid-1700s, today they number in the tens of thousands, with estimates ranging from 25,000 to 40,000. Perhaps some 50 million scientific articles have been published since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, with an estimated 1.4 million to 1.8 million articles published annually. Although hard to measure, one study estimated that scientific publications may be growing at an annual rate of 8–9 percent, up from just 2–3 percent during the period from the mid-eighteenth century to 1945, and less than 1 percent prior to the middle of the eighteenth century.12
The second half of the twentieth century, in particular, ushered in an unprecedented degree of progress in many fields, with tremendous gains in health, food availability, material well-being, and life spans. Yet these advances came at great cost to the planet’s ecosystems and resources. Technical advances were often pursued single-mindedly, with little sense of restraint or long-term wisdom that might consider the repercussions for the natural world. Science, in other words, is a double-edged sword: it underpins the breathtaking progress that modern societies now take for granted, but it also enables the process that turns every last resource of the planet into a commodity.13
To a large extent, this is the result of large evolutionary forces—the genetic, developmental, and cultural factors that influence and determine human behavior. Humanity’s ability to marshal the earth’s resources, along with the economic and political competition that drives governments, corporations, and individuals, has meant that there have been few—if any—constraining factors on human actions. This lack of constraint may be the biggest threat to human survival. As J. R. McNeill observed, “The same characteristics that underwrote our long-term biological success—adaptability, cleverness—have lately permitted us to erect a highly specialized fossil fuel-based civilization so ecologically disruptive that it guarantees surprises and shocks.”14
The industrial era’s innumerable discoveries and inventions were underwritten by cheap and plentiful fossil energy. Humans used perhaps 10 times as much energy during the twentieth century as they did in the 1,000 years before. Coal, oil, and natural gas not only pack far more energy than traditional sources like wood, but their versatility allows them to be used for many different purposes, such as heating and cooling, industrial processes, electricity, and diverse forms of transport.15
World coal extraction shot up from about 10 million tons in 1800 to 762 million tons by 1900. It reached 4,700 million tons in 2000, and then climbed to almost 7,900 million tons in 2013—a more than 10-fold increase since 1900. World oil production started only in the late nineteenth century, but grew rapidly from 20 million tons in 1900 to 3,260 million tons in 2000, and to 4,130 million tons in 2013—a 207-fold expansion since 1900.16
Pre-industrial societies relied on a limited range and quantity of materials, with wood, ceramics, cotton, wool, and leather playing major roles. By contrast, industrialized societies use tens of thousands of versatile materials drawn from the entirety of naturally occurring elements. Materials like plastics or aluminum are ubiquitous nowadays (generating convenience as much as pollution), but they had their beginnings only in the late nineteenth century.17
Metals have long been used by humans, but their application on a mass scale is a relatively recent phenomenon. World metals production rose from 30 million tons in 1900 to 198 million tons in 1950. After reaching 740 million tons in 1974, output leveled off for the next 20 years. But then came another phase of rapid growth, driven principally by economic expansion in China, and production reached 1.7 billion tons in 2013. (See Figure 1–1.) The bulk of this figure is accounted for by steel production, which expanded 55.8-fold since 1900 and 8-fold since 1950. Aluminum production grew 32-fold since 1950, copper and zinc 6- to 7-fold, and lead and gold about 3-fold.18
Figure 1–1. World Metals Production, 1950–2013
Chemical compounds have become ubiquitous to the point that a 2013 UNEP report noted, “There is hardly any industry where chemical substances are not used, and there is no single economic sector where chemicals do not play an important role.” Roughly 10 million chemical compounds have been synthesized since 1900, with some 150,000 or so put to commercial use—although nobody knows the exact number. The global chemical industry’s output climbed from $171 billion in 1970 to over $4.1 trillion in 2010 (expressed in nominal dollars). World chemical sales more than doubled during just the last decade, again due mostly to China, where output nearly tripled.19
New chemicals keep getting introduced into commerce each year—an average of 700 in the United States alone. The rising number of compounds, their increasing complexity, and an ever more intricate supply chain is giving rise to concerns that poor management of chemicals could pose substantial dangers to the health of communities and ecosystems. The industry is a perfect example of the mix of benefits and hidden threats that is so characteristic of the modern age.20
Increased use of synthetic fertilizers has been a key aspect of today’s industrialized agriculture (along with high energy and water use and inputs like pesticides). In 1940, the world used about 4 million tons of fertilizer. By 2000, the figure reached 137 million tons, and by 2013, about 179 million tons. As J. R. McNeill reminds us, without fertilizers, “the world’s population would need about 30 percent more good cropland.” Massive use of synthetic fertilizers led to widespread water pollution. It also helped consolidate food production to a limited number of crops that responded well to applications of fertilizer, leading to widespread monocultures. And fertilizer production is highly energy intensive, part of the industrialization of agriculture.21
One of the areas in which the consequences of industrialization show up most dramatically is air quality. For most of human history, air pollution was of a local and limited nature, but during the twentieth century, it grew exponentially as heating, power generation, metal smelting, motorized transportation, waste incineration, and other human activities mushroomed.
Automobiles provide extraordinary individual mobility, but they have been a major contributor to urban air pollution. From fewer than 10,000 in 1900, 8 million cars rolled off the world’s assembly lines in 1950, a number that skyrocketed to 85 million in 2013. From perhaps 25,000 cars on the world’s roads in 1900 and less than 1 million in 1910, the global automobile fleet was close to 100 million in 1960 and crossed the 1 billion threshold in 2013.22
Pollution Control and New Growth Impulses
Massive air pollution was one of the signature issues for a budding modern environmental movement in the early 1970s, which eventually prodded governments in industrialized countries to adopt pollution control measures and to compel industry to develop more-efficient production technologies. In the United States, sulfur dioxide emissions were cut by 83 percent between 1970 and 2013, carbon monoxide emissions declined by 64 percent, nitrogen oxides by 51 percent, and volatile organic compounds by 49 percent. Better controls and more-efficient technologies also helped reduce emissions of metals like copper and lead, although they remained far above the levels of a century earlier. (See Table 1–1.)23
Table 1–1. World Metal Emissions to the Atmosphere, 1901–1990
Period |
Cadmium |
Copper |
Lead |
Nickel |
Zinc |
|
|||||
annual average, in thousands of tons |
|||||
|
|||||
1901–1910 |
0.9 |
5.3 |
47 |
0.8 |
39 |
1951–1960 |
3.4 |
23 |
270 |
14 |
150 |
1971–1980 |
7.4 |
59 |
430 |
42 |
330 |
1981–1990 |
5.9 |
47 |
340 |
33 |
260 |
|
|||||
Source: See endnote 23. |
|||||
|
|||||
During the final quarter of the twentieth century, pollution control, greater efficiency, and a degree of material saturation in the Western economies slowed further growth of production and consumption. But since the 1990s, globalization and the rise of China and a number of other “emerging economies” provided a whole new impulse for industrial development and resource use. A rising middle class in these nations started to imitate Western lifestyles, and industrial production relocated increasingly to these countries. China alone now accounts for just under half of the world’s steel production, up from only 5 percent in 1980 (when worldwide production was less than half of what it is now).24
The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro was a milestone in global environmental consciousness. Yet in the two decades since then, the pressures on the planet’s natural resources and ecological systems have only increased, and the second Rio conference—“Rio+20” in 2012—was far less of an environmental milestone. (See Table 1–2.) The production of energy-intensive materials—cement, plastics, and steel—has more than doubled since 1992, far outstripping overall economic growth. Global resource extraction—of fossil fuels, metals, minerals, and biomass—grew 50 percent in the 25 years between 1980 and 2005, to about 58 billion tons of raw materials (and another 40 billion tons of material removed simply to gain access to coveted resources).25
Recognizing and Acting on Unexpected Threats
Being science-based, modern societies eventually come to learn about the unexpected and sometimes unintended consequences of turning ever-greater portions of the planet’s natural base into commodities. We have gradually come to comprehend that we are depleting resources at unsustainable rates, spreading dangerous pollutants, undermining ecosystems, and threatening to unhinge the planet’s climate balance.
Table 1–2. Social, Economic, and Environmental Trends Between the First and Second Rio Earth Summits
Trends |
Percent Change, 1992–2012 |
|
|
||
Population and Economy |
Urban population |
26 |
World gross domestic product (GDP) |
75 |
|
World GDP per capita |
39 |
|
World trade |
311 |
|
|
||
Food and Agriculture |
Food production index |
45 |
Irrigated area |
21 |
|
Land under organic farming |
240 |
|
Proportion of fish stocks fully exploited |
13 |
|
|
||
Industry |
Cement production |
170 |
Steel production |
100 |
|
Electricity production |
66 |
|
Plastics production |
130 |
|
|
||
Transportation |
Passenger car production |
88 |
Passenger car fleet |
73 |
|
Air transport, passengers |
100 |
|
Air transport, freight |
230 |
|
|
||
Atmosphere |
Carbon dioxide emissions |
36 |
Use of ozone-depleting substances |
-93 |
|
|
||
Source: See endnote 25. |
||
|
||
But a reckoning is complicated by the fact that the complete environmental impacts of human actions are not always readily discernible. Environmental change takes place not in linear, predictable ways that can be studied in isolation from other factors, but rather entails unexpected discontinuities, synergisms, feedback loops, and cascading effects. (See Table 1–3.) And these phenomena can also reinforce each other—i.e., feedback loops can generate discontinuities, discontinuities can produce synergisms, and synergisms can trigger cascading effects. Thus, the full costs of modern conveniences often remain hidden, sometimes making themselves felt only years or even decades down the road.26
Table 1–3. Types of Unexpected Environmental Change
Type of Change |
|
Definition |
|
||
Discontinuity |
|
An abrupt shift in a trend or change from a previously stable state. |
|
|
Example: Overfishing leading to a sudden crash in fish populations, rather than to a gradual decline. |
|
||
Synergism |
|
A change in which two or more phenomena combine to produce an effect that is greater than the sum of separate individual impacts. |
|
|
Example: Flood impacts magnified by a combination of deforestation and population growth in areas vulnerable to flooding. |
|
||
Feedback loop |
|
A cycle of change that amplifies itself. |
|
|
Example: Dwindling Arctic ice due to climate change causes the ocean to warm more rapidly, which in turn accelerates the loss of ice. |
|
||
Cascading effects |
|
Effects that occur when a change in one component of a system produces change in another component, which in turn changes yet another component, and so on. |
|
|
Example: A decline in herring populations depresses sea lion and seal populations, which leads killer whales to prey more on otters instead. The resulting collapse of otter populations triggers an explosion in sea urchins (the favorite prey of otters), but demolishes the kelp forests on which they feed and jeopardizes other marine species. |
|
||
Source: See endnote 26. |
||
|
||
The massive snowfall in the northeastern United States in November 2014 is just one recent illustration of such complex interactions. Rapid disappearance of Arctic sea ice north of Scandinavia due to warming temperatures leads the ocean underneath to absorb more of the sun’s energy during the summertime. In the fall, the absorbed heat is released back into the atmosphere and disrupts the circumpolar winds whose patterns determine much of the weather across the earth’s northern hemisphere. Scientists have found that the bubble of warm air creates a northward bulge in the jet stream. That in turn creates a surface high-pressure area circulating clockwise and pulling cold air from the Arctic over northern Eurasia—which creates a southward dip in the jet stream. The northward bulge of the jet stream over Scandinavia and the southward dip over Asia combine to create a pattern that sends energy up into the stratosphere and disrupts the polar vortex. As a consequence, frigid Arctic air gets pushed south, creating perfect conditions for massive snowfall. Scientists think that the disruptions to the jet stream and the polar vortex will become more frequent in the future, as greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase.27
Matters only get more complicated once scientific discovery of such environmental repercussions has taken place. Scientific findings need to be translated into a roadmap for society—into do’s and don’ts. It is one thing, for instance, to stipulate that society should heed the precautionary principle (which holds that if a particular action is suspected of causing harm, the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking the action). But it is quite another to make society actually live by it. Resistance to needed change is not surprising in instances where local (i.e., someone else’s) air or water quality is at stake, or where a given species might face extinction. After all, humans have amply demonstrated a willingness to sacrifice the well-being of certain, other, groups of people (or of animals, etc.) in exchange for short-term gain.
With civilization itself hanging in the balance, however, change in the face of climate chaos should be a no-brainer. Yet the politics of climate change to date indicates just how limited society’s willingness to act on scientific advice can be. The political process through which this has to be accomplished is inevitably difficult, given that almost no aspect of human society remains untouched by efforts to stabilize the climate. But it has become more difficult in recent years by the increasing influence of money on electoral and legislative processes. In the battle to do what is needed to ensure humanity’s long-term survival, a combination of denial, short-term thinking, profit interests, and human hubris is proving hard—perhaps even impossible—to overcome.
Getting society to acknowledge and address environmental and health impacts has never been an easy task. Consider these examples:
• Leaded gasoline. Lead was deliberately added to gasoline from the 1920s onward, after a chemical engineer discovered that it improved engine performance. Even though there were early concerns, the major proponents of this practice in the United States, General Motors and DuPont, succeeded in preventing regulations for decades. By the 1960s and 1970s, medical research showed that leaded gasoline had contributed to elevated levels of lead in people’s blood. The Soviet Union first banned the practice in 1967. The United States phased out leaded gasoline in the late 1970s, Japan and Western Europe in the late 1980s, and many other countries in the 1990s. In some countries, like the United States, the fact that catalytic converters—devices introduced to reduce emissions of hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide—function properly only with lead-free fuel helped greatly in bringing about a policy change. By 2011, lead had been removed from gasoline in at least 175 countries, permitting a 90 percent drop in blood lead levels worldwide and saving an estimated 1.2 million lives each year.28
• Photochemical smog. This brown haze afflicting many cities can inflame people’s breathing passages and decrease lung capacity, as well as affect the health of crops and forests. Beyond the impacts of individual air pollutants, smog is a synergistic effect that results from a cocktail of substances, including ground-level ozone, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and carbon monoxide. It was first identified in the early twentieth century, when coal burning in cities was ubiquitous (as it still is in Chinese cities today), whereas the “modern” form of smog derives from vehicular and industrial emissions and became a problem from the 1950s on. Air pollution control measures and cleaner motor vehicle fuels have somewhat alleviated the situation, although smog continues to be a health problem in many cities around the world.29
Steve Jurvetson
An antenna tower in the smog of Shanghai, 2007.
• Ozone-destroying CFCs. A class of chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) was initially highly prized, given the versatile use of these compounds as refrigerants, propellants, flame retardants, and solvents. But from the mid-1970s on, scientific evidence began to mount that CFCs harm the earth’s ozone layer, which protects people, animals, and plants from dangerous ultraviolet radiation. By the mid-1980s, with a dramatic seasonal depletion of the ozone layer over Antarctica, governments finally acted. The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, adopted in 1987, led to a dramatic decline in CFC use—a drop of 96 percent by 2005. A September 2014 UNEP report found that the ozone layer is slowly healing and likely will recover by mid-century. However, there is a hidden threat surrounding the hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) that came into use as substitutes for CFCs; given that HFCs are potent greenhouse gases, safer alternatives need to be developed.30
• Superbugs. The livestock sector is characterized increasingly by industrial methods that confine animals in cramped conditions, and that administer heavy doses of antibiotics to speed animal growth and reduce the likelihood of disease outbreak. In the United States, almost four times the amount of antibiotics is used in livestock operations as to treat ill people. However, such indiscriminate practices pose a threat to antibiotics’ effectiveness for human uses—one that has been recognized widely, but not acted on. A similar problem lies in the overuse of herbicides and pesticides, as well as the development of genetically modified seeds that emit their own pesticide. As insects develop resistance to such products, farmers confront the danger of catastrophic harvest failure.31
Climate change is multiplying these kinds of problems. Humanity is ever so slowly coming to grips with the growing reality of a destabilized climate. Even as scientists and others shed light on the likely repercussions such as sea-level rise, droughts, floods, and superstorms, some challenges remain undetected or at least underappreciated. These challenges—several of which are discussed in the chapters that follow—concern not only environmental dynamics themselves, but also how they translate into the social, economic, and political spheres.
Energy, credit, and the end of growth. The prosperous economies and the culture of growth that industrialized nations take for normal, and that most other nations aspire to, rest on cheap (mainly fossil) energy. But, as Chapter 2 explains, we already have tapped the easy energy stores, so the push for continued growth is taking increasing amounts of energy and investment money, leaving less for every other activity. Moreover, the thousands of energy “slaves” we each have working for us are walking a tightrope: energy must be costly enough to be profitable for producers, yet cheap enough to be affordable to consumers. The higher that prices must rise to sustain production, the more likely is a situation of reduced demand, economic malaise, and rising debt.
Curbing growth. Economic growth drives most environmental problems, and it has produced a world in which human activities have grown too large for the planet to accommodate them sustainably. Forests are scalped, rivers run dry, species are going extinct, and humans are changing the climate, all driven by the pursuit of growth. Yet few recognize that growth itself needs to be abandoned as a national goal. Growth is widely regarded as inevitable and indispensable, but as a matter of national policy, it is barely 50 years old. Fortunately, as the authors of Chapter 3 argue, a move toward an economy that is not driven by growth of material throughput—yet that still offers adequate employment, and reduces inequality and environmental impact—is achievable.
Stranded assets. Continued investments in a fossil fuel-centered energy system—and especially in such forms of “extreme energy” as tar sands, Arctic oil deposits, shale oil and gas, and mountaintop-removal coal—will lock societies onto a dead-end path. Scientists are warning that the bulk of the world’s proven fossil fuel resources can never be touched if the world wants to avoid runaway climate change. Further investing in them—and thus enlarging the carbon “bubble”—exposes not only energy companies and fossil fuel exporters to incalculable risk (a problem analyzed in Chapter 4), but also pension funds, municipal authorities, and others who invest in such companies for long-term financial returns. Absent alternative policies, the world may confront an unpalatable choice between climate chaos and economic doom.
Declining harvests. Loss or degradation of key agricultural resources—especially land, water, and a stable climate—is leading to a global agricultural system in which more countries depend on international markets for basic food supplies. Chapter 5 argues that a food import strategy reduces pressure on agricultural resources, especially water, in many countries, but also renders importing countries vulnerable to supply disruptions caused by poor harvests, political manipulation, or other factors beyond their control.
Ron Nichols, USDA NRCS
A drought-stunted soybean plant withers in the Arkansas summer sun.
Decline of the oceans. Most humans spend little time in or on the oceans, but our lives are profoundly shaped by their condition. That condition is increasingly dire. Overfishing is compromising the oceans’ ability to supply the protein on which roughly 3 billion people depend. Ocean waters also function as a major sink for human-caused carbon emissions and the heat they trap in the atmosphere, but the rate of absorption of both heat and emissions may be slowing. And carbon absorption is changing the acidity of ocean waters, which in turn imperils vital marine organisms and even the marine food web itself. Chapter 6 considers these dangers.
Arctic changes. The Arctic is a showcase for the effects of climate change, especially with the alarming decline in the extent of summer sea ice and its positive feedback effects on warming. The region is an area of contention as well, as the expansion of open water entices Arctic nations with the prospect of easier access to oil and other resources. But, as Chapter 7 explores, nearly unnoticed is the struggle of Arctic peoples to ensure that the fate of the region they call home is largely in their hands, not in those of southerners seeking to impose their own political agendas.
Emerging diseases from animals. Human activities disrupt ecological systems worldwide, increasing the likelihood that infectious disease will spread from animals to humans, as has already occurred with the Ebola virus and HIV/AIDS. Scientists estimate that more than 60 percent of the 400 new infectious diseases in humans that emerged in the past 70 years were of animal origin. And this threat is increasing as land-use changes bring animals and humans together, as livestock raising becomes intensified, and as the use of antibiotics in animals increases. Chapter 8 contends that, despite rising attention to high-profile pandemics like Ebola, neither governments nor publics appreciate that such outbreaks are emblematic of a systemic, global problem.
Randal J. Schoepp
U.S. Army technicians set up an assay for Ebola in a containment laboratory.
Climate migrants. Finally, population displacements due to climate change and other adverse environmental developments could undermine the social fabric of affected societies as well as trigger growing competition over resources, jobs, and social services in receiving areas. The speed, direction, and extent of such population movements remain largely the stuff of conjecture today, but they could have deeply destabilizing economic and political consequences in the future. Chapter 9 argues that timely adaptation measures—including support for migrants as well as for those who lack the resources to move—can help individuals and societies at large cope with the repercussions of a changing climate.
Conclusion
Human ingenuity has fashioned technically advanced societies and maximized the production of goods and services. Our economic systems are programmed to squeeze ever more resources from a planet increasingly in distress—whether it be more oil and gas from underground deposits, more milk from a cow, or more economic surplus from the human workforce. Although the discussion of political systems often revolves around lofty ideas like freedom, democracy, and different forms of representation, at base, they are engineered to support the process of maximizing material throughput.
But this success has come at the expense of weakened biological diversity and compromised natural systems. And it is the result of a relatively narrow set of factors and circumstances, ranging from natural conditions to human institutions. Yet these very circumstances could one day be swept away by the severe shocks that a destabilized climate entails, putting in question the ability of societies not just to thrive, but to adapt and possibly even survive. This is especially the case if societies fail to recognize hidden threats in a timely manner.
The very pillars of contemporary success—among them, high degrees of specialization, complexity, and manifold interconnections—could very well turn out to be humanity’s Achilles heel. Specialization works well only within certain tightly controlled parameters, but it could be useless under changed circumstances. Complexity and interconnections multiply the strengths and advantages of a viable system, but they also make it susceptible to a rapid cascade of destabilizing impacts. Such a highly productive system is actually low on resilience because it focuses on constantly reducing any slack or redundancy—the exact features that allow for resilience to materialize. Author Thomas Homer-Dixon quotes Buzz Holling, a leading Canadian ecologist, who has warned that the longer a system is locked onto a trajectory of unsustainable growth, “the greater its vulnerability and the bigger and more dramatic its collapse will be.”32
Seen through this broader lens, it is clear that the challenge for humanity today is no longer anything like what it faced in the 1960s and 1970s, when developing pollution abatement technologies and lessening the degree to which resources were wasted provided a more-or-less adequate answer to the most pressing problems of the day. The world now needs to adopt solutions that change the entire system of production and consumption in a fundamental manner, that move societies from conditions of energy and materials surplus to scarcity, and that develop the foresight needed to recognize still-hidden threats to sustainability. This goes far beyond the realm of technical adaptations, and instead requires large-scale social, economic, and political engineering—in an effort to create the foundations for a more sustainable human civilization.
